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“Fuck Salina.”
I gasp at his crude words. Then I laugh.
“That’s more like it.” He sips on his drink again, swallowing loudly. “Screw her, right? We don’t need her.”
We.
“It’s not the nicest—”
“We don’t. Fuck her.” The way he cuts me off, it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to console me.
Although, at the moment, I’m desperate enough to accept just about anything from the man who sounds more and more like he might be my father.
“We can be a family of our own, you and me, Prue. I can visit. What do you say?”
As much as I’m dying to believe him, as much as I want to have a father to hold me, I’m cautious. I’ve seen one too many catfish TV shows to have me doubting strangers.
Unless, of course, it’s a handsome man named Theo who gives me such genuine, believable vibes that I can’t deny him the keys to my heart.
Sigh.
“I’d love to meet you, it’s just…” I pause, my stomach heaving at what I’m about to ask of him.
“Out with it.”
“I’ve been disappointed. A lot.” I run my hand through my hair, embarrassed to admit to a weakness. “I want to send you a paternity test for you to return to me before we meet. Is that okay?”
“You paying?”
His question throws me off, but I don’t let it get to me. It’s a question. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Okay, sure thing then.”
Our conversation has reached its end. The rest of it, the rest of our history, will have to wait for the DNA test and, hopefully, our future face-to-face meeting.
“Perfect. Text me your address, and I’ll forward you mine, so you can send it back.”
“All right. Talk soon.”
“Talk soon—” I ache to sayDad, the word I couldn’t say and craved for years. But as I’ve learned repeatedly, hope is a vicious fuckboy rather than a comforting lover. I settle on his name instead. “Zeke.”
We hang up, and I add ordering a paternity test to my mental to-do list for today. I have to go over the notes I’ve written down the past week about the procedures Michelle conducted.
Have to clear my head from this conversation and store away the excitement and hope.
Otherwise, I won’t stop obsessing over it when I have more important things for now. Like my work. Like what exactly I’m going to say to Theo sometime next week.
I finish what I started earlier, removing my clothes and placing them neatly in the hamper.
I step into the shower, and, ugh.
“Not again,” I groan when my foot lands on something sticky.
I really have to start washing the shampoo better from the floor if I don’t want to slip and fall the next time I walk in.
CHAPTER TEN
